Good morning!

At the UMass Hall of Fame induction ceremony last night in the Campus Center auditorium, Jim Reid was presented with the John Francis Kennedy Maroon Leadership Award. As anyone who’s followed UMass football for the past half century knows, the recognition is well deserved.

No one would ever have expected this in 1992 after he resigned as head coach over a scholarship dispute. He’d been at UMass for 19 years, the last seven as head coach when UMass won three Yankee Conference championships.

“It was so much fun coaching here,” Reid said during a telephone interview from his home on the Cape. “My children were in elementary school, I never thought I’d leave.”

We first met in the summer of ’76 in an empty Boyden gym. I didn’t introduce myself but he was a few lockers down from me and I wanted to say something to this wild and crazy assistant coach who’d run around the field in a gorilla suit to pump up his players. “Hear you might have a down year,” I said.

“Yup. Anyone wants to get us, this is the year.”

And that was that until I started covering the team for the Valley Advocate and doing stats for Ted Peene who owned  WTTT Radio. Peene did the play-by-play with sidekick Bill Carty, a gravely voiced chain smoker and former defensive tackle for Vic Fusia. Carty’s claim to fame was being the last player cut by the Cowboys in 1968, or so the story went. 

By the time Reid was named head coach, I’d moved on to become the UMass football beat writer for the Recorder.

A Medford Mustang

Reid grew up northwest of Boston in Medford, a hockey town better known for producing players like Keith Tkachuk and Joe Sacco. He was coach Frank McKinnon’s running back, and his two touchdowns against archrival Malden on Thanksgiving in ‘67 helped the Mustangs stay undefeated en route to the eastern Mass. championship.

Recruited by Northeastern, UConn and Maine, Reid chose Northeastern but soon realized he needed to be further from home. “I just couldn’t get away from my friends who weren’t going to college. Bob Pickett had recruited me to Maine. We were in touch.”

At Maine, he played safety for legendary Black Bears coach Walter Abbott. His teammates included South Deerfield’s Ron Puchalski and Whately’s Don and Frank Skroski.

“Walt Abbott was a ball of fire,” said Reid.

Abbott felt the same about Reid, something I learned during an interview with him in 1986 prior to the UMass season opener. “We ran a play, and Jim blew the coverage. We ran it again, and he blew the coverage again. Jim stood up and sprinted straight into a telephone pole and knocked himself out.”

After college Reid married Judy Crowley, a high school cheerleader whom he took to a Red Sox game on their first date. They were wed at St. Joseph’s Church in Medford Square and today have three middle-aged children, Matthew, Meghan and Molly.

Reid was ready to teach history and coach football and baseball at Medford High when Bob Pickett called from Amherst where he was Dick MacPherson’s defensive coordinator. “He wanted me to be a graduate assistant. You gotta be actually going to graduate school, so I enrolled in sport management. It was a great academic introduction to the world of college football, not just running around yelling at players but learning to analyze things.”

The coaching game

Maybe so, but he still did a lot of yelling. A bantamweight with a commanding voice and infectious laugh, his intensity is what got the players’ attention. “You cannot fool players. Don’t lie, don’t mislead, they can handle the truth.”

But, Reid added, “The game is so intense that at some point you have to have some fun with them.” 

By 1978 Reid had been promoted to defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. They were 8-4 and getting ready to host Boston College on Thanksgiving weekend. Players were on the field wondering where’s Coach Reid when a van pulled up and out jumped a gorilla beating its chest like King Kong. “I was jumping around so much the head fell off,” said Reid.

“BC was bigger than us and our defensive tackle Eric Cregan wasn’t locking out in practice so I told our biggest player Dan Petrie to put me on his shoulders. I got up there looking down at him and said, ‘Cregan you better not [mess up] again because this is the size of the guys you’re gonna be playing on Saturday!’”

UMass won 27-0, and three weeks later the Minutemen were playing Florida A&M for the I-AA championship in frigid Wichita Falls, Texas. I was at the Springfield Civic Center covering the Sugar Ray Leonard-Armando Muniz fight and catching glimpses of the game on a black-and-white TV. The wind blew the flag straight out and Pickett stood stoically on the sideline watching UMass lose, 35-28.

“The wind was ferocious. We were just as tough but not quite as athletic,” said Reid.

Covering the coach

Pickett retired after six seasons and four Yankee Conference championships. His successor Bob Stull was on a fast track to the D-1 coaching ranks. After two seasons, he was hired by the University of Texas-El Paso and asked Reid to come with him. “I thanked him but said no, I loved Amherst and didn’t want to move. He called the board [of trustees] and the school president and told them ‘The guy you need to hire is Jim Reid.’”

A lot of coaches don’t know how to handle the news media. Their comments are disingenuous and their attitude is condescending, but Reid was a common man from a blue-collar town and treated the press as his equal. “You can’t control what people say and write about you, but if you’re good to them and talk to them honestly, that helps them understand you.”

To the dismay of sports information director Howie Davis, Reid let me interview players whenever and wherever, and cover games from the sideline. One day Milt Cole, the sports editor of the Daily Hampshire Gazette called and read him a quote from my story. 

“You didn’t say that in the press conference,” said the rotund, cigar-chomping Cole.

“No I didn’t,” said Reid. “He brings his sneakers and notebook, and after games we go for a run, and you’re welcome to come with us.”

After a 41-19 loss at BU, I wrote that watching the game was “an exercise in self-flagellation.” The coaches were outraged but Reid said nobody knew what the word meant. He had to call his wife.

Reid had the personal touch. He spoke at football banquets like the Canon-Novak Award night in Turners Falls. The late Shadow Bogusz whose boys played at TFHS got a thrill the night Reid invited them to his house after a game.

When beloved trainer Vic Keedy was at Sunbridge of Hadley, Reid got two busloads of players out onto the lawn to wish him well. “I had visited Vic the night before and he wasn’t in great shape. I got him to the window and we did some screaming and yelling.” 

Keedy died three weeks later.

His teams won three Yankee Conference championships in five years and went 24-9-1 overall those seasons. The other three seasons they were 12-20-1. In 1990, he became the first coach to beat Delaware in 15 meetings. The following year they were 4-7 and lost the last two games.

Then came that fateful morning before signing day in 1992.  “When they don’t like you, they start taking stuff away from the program,” he said.

‘Honor and integrity‘

On a cold February morning Reid and offensive coordinator Bob McConnell were about to leave for Connecticut to “wrap up a tight end” when athletic director Frank McInerney came around the corner. “Hey Jim, do you have a minute? It’ll only take a minute. We’re not going to give out any scholarships this year.”

Reid laughed. “I’m in a hurry, what do you want?”

“We’ve got budget problems,” said McInerney.

McInerney was a TV sports anchor and commentator who did a Sunday show on Channel 40 called Conversations with Frank McInerney. His pal David Bartley was a UMass grad and Speaker of the House in Boston who’d helped him get the AD’s job after Warren McGuirk retired.

“Frank McInerney was a decent guy. It was Bischoff,” said Reid, referring to David Bischoff, the Dean of the School of Physical Education and Athletics. The school and the position were dissolved in 1992-93.

Thirteen players had committed to play at UMass and now Reid had to tell them it was a no-go. “I told McConnell we got a problem. I called my father, a World War II vet whose boat sank in the Pacific. He said I was responsible for my family and my finances, and I told him this was about honor and integrity. I got the staff together and told them I was going to have to leave.”

Reid called UNH coach Bill Bowes. “He couldn’t believe it. I told him if he’s got spots open he can have our players, he took five. Tom Jackson took a couple.”

He went into McInerney’s office and gave him his resignation. “If you leave this office and don’t go back to this job, you’ll never have a job in college athletics again,” said McInerney. “The moment you walk out that door, they’ll forget about you.”

Reid walked out the door.

A coaching carousel

The previous summer at a Yankee Conference golf outing, Reid had been in the same foursome with Richmond AD Chuck Boone. The Spiders were in a tailspin and Boone called Reid and asked if he’d be the defensive coordinator. “I said sure as long as it’s OK with the coach. Joe Cullen and I went down together.” 

A Quincy native, Cullen played nose tackle and was a UMass co-captain in 1989. He joined Reid’s staff and began the slow climb to where he is today, the Kansas City Chiefs defensive line coach under Steve Spagnuola who was a grad assistant at UMass.

After helping the Spiders win 12 games in two seasons, Boston College coach Dan Henning hired him to be the Eagles’ defensive coordinator. “Henning told me I got the job because of my character and leadership ability. I later found out it was my ability to take [grief]. They had a great defensive line coach who was miserable to work with.”

When Richmond fired Jim Marshall the following year, Reid returned for a six-year run, but coaches are hired to be fired and Reid left after a 2-9 record and went on a coaching carousel that included stops in Syracuse, Bucknell, VMI, the Miami Dolphins and Virginia.

“Virginia coach Mike London blew up his football staff Sunday” the Virginia Pilot reported.

“I had nothing going. I’m down at my cottage, it’s the end of January, and I was ready to interview to teach history and coach at a local high school when my phone rings.”

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz was coming off a 3-8 season and needed help. “Come to the national football convention and meet our coordinator Phil Parker,” said Ferentz. 

“When he told me to pack enough clothes to stay for a month, I knew I was in,” said Reid, who was honored as the 2015 National Linebackers Coach of the Year by FootballScoop.

“Jim turned the program around,” Ferentz said last year in a telephone interview. “We haven’t had a losing year since then.”

Alas, Reid left to be Steve Addazio’s defensive coordinator at BC in 2016 but four years later Addazio was fired and Reid was out the door. Enter UMass coach Walt Bell who’d lost a D-Line coach. “Call Jim Reid,” said one of his assistants.

“I didn’t want to create a problem for Walt and Ryan Bamford,” said Reid. “I called Ryan and told him to clear it with whoever he needed to. He got back and said, ‘We’re clean. Everybody involved with that is dead, and anything like that would never happen here again.’ Ryan was very good to me.”

Reid compiled scouting reports on upcoming opponents and coached the scout team. While coaches came and left he rekindled interest in the moribund program by organizing reunions and handwriting notes to former players.

When Joe Harasymiak was hired he told Reid, “I want you on board.”

Shortly afterward Reid was felled by a mysterious illness that sidelined him for nearly a year, causing UMass to announce his retirement. Today he’s walking five miles a day and cheering for UMass.

“I listened to the Rutgers win on the radio, on the student station. I was so excited, that one win, what it did for the school would cost millions in advertising. I knew [Harasymiak] would be a terrific coach. Some guys got on me after the 0-12 season, but the culture has been established. He’s one of us. He’s a straight shooter, not a bullshitter. ”

After learning of the John Francis Kennedy Award, Reid contacted Tim Schmitt, Vito Perrone, Jim Talarico, Paul Metallo, Ron Puchalski — “a bunch of the ‘70s guys who said they’d be there.

“If you know John Kennedy, the way he became successful, it’s a huge honor. It’s up there with the conference championships. We try to teach our players to be John Francis Kennedy.”

Indeed. Spoken like a true UMass Minuteman.

Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@gmail.com.